Quote:
Originally Posted by Billfred
Yes and no. I can't speak for all sponsors, but Bosch does care about the quality of the team though not as much the performance of the robot. If we were cussing and carrying on and being stupid at events, I would not expect to stay a Bosch team. If we were seeded dead last but doing the right things and presenting ourselves well? Fair shot.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Fultz
As a team sponsor, we are more concerned with the behavior, attitude and commitment to FIRST ideals than specific performance in the competition. Some of our teams perform well, some struggle, some are in the middle. We support them all in every way we can.
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This is so much of what I came here to say.
From a different perspective, this year I was responsible for launching a FIRST sponsorship program at my company (United Therapeutics). It was pretty interesting to hear different perspectives on what we should consider for criteria - but overall we came to a good mix between the picture of the team as a whole, level of need, and location (priority given to teams local to our offices).
We started with a brand-new roster of 25 FRC teams running a full range of ages - 386 all the way up to 5511. In terms of what we were looking for, performance on the field is probably dead-last when it comes to deciding how we renew their grants for 2015-16.
Is it really cool that we had several regional winners, tons of awards, and even two Championship division winners (paired together, I might add!) on #TeamUnither this season? Absolutely. But if any one of those teams stopped being an appropriate representation of FIRST's ideals - you can bet we'd drop them.
To others' points - communication is key. How you get your message across will greatly impact how that potential future sponsor sees you - and once you have them, keeping in touch to let them know how you're doing is something they won't forget.